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A Writer At Heart |
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Aureo P. Castro's Written Works |
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So you now have a wireless network in your house. Thanks to the wizards in the wireless router’s software you were able to easily setup your wireless network. You can now enjoy the convenience of having a wireless access to other computers in your house and to the Internet. However, your home network is now open to malicious eavesdroppers and unauthorized users who want to access the Internet for free through your home Internet connection. But what measures can you take to start beefing up your network security while you’re still building your know-how on how to mitigate threats against your network both from the Internet and from around your physical wireless perimeter. A simple but sometimes inconvenient measure that you can use is just to be conscious of network security always and to make it a habit to turn off the wireless router when it is not in use. Aside from saving a small amount in electricity cost, it will at least minimize the time that your wireless network is exposed to any unscrupulous person who may want to snoop on your network or use your Internet connection to access the Internet. You don’t have to plug and unplug from your convenient outlet every time you want to turn on or turn off your wireless router. Buy an extension cord with a switch for turning the electric power on or off and plug your wireless router to the extension cord. This way all you will need to do to power on or off your wireless router is to turn the extension cord switch on or off. (Quite an ingenious tip I would say, eh?) One way to make it less easy for others to make use of your home network is to disable the DHCP server on your wireless router. A DHCP server dispenses network settings to wireless computers to enable them to avail of network resources. However, it also makes it one step easier to make use of your network resources for selfish ends. If you only have a few wireless computers on your network, you can just configure their wireless network settings manually. You only need to give to each wireless computer a unique Internet Protocol address and subnet mask belonging to the class of private addresses available for anyone’s use. Then, you can set its default gateway to the Internet Protocol inside network address of your wireless router which is already set by the router manufacturer. (You may also want to change the default router’s address for added security.) Your wireless router is by default configured to act as a DNS server agent so you can just use your router’s Internet inside network protocol address as the DNS server of all of the wireless computers in your network. All of these network settings can be found or changed by looking at the computer’s wireless network settings (Internet Protocol settings). If you have just used the wizards in setting up your wireless router, then no security setting has been turned on and your network will look like a sitting duck waiting for hackers to break into. Your first order of business is to set your wireless network encryption to the highest level provided by your wireless router. You can also use a long pass phrase that contains numbers, letters and special characters. To help you remember the pass phrase, keep a copy in your wallet as well as in your cell phone or PDA. You can also use an off-line computer that is not connected to the network to store your passwords. Another way of making it harder for others to access your network from outside your house is to stop your wireless from broadcasting its network name. You can do this by disabling SSID broadcast in your wireless router’s configuration settings. You can access your router’s configuration files by using a computer that is connected through cable to your router. You can also use the wireless computers in doing this but there is a danger that you may lose connection if you make a configuration mistake. One way of protecting your network from attacks from the Internet is to enable your router’s firewall. Routers use the Stateful Packet Inspection strategy to keep the hackers at bay. In simple words, it makes sure that packets entering the router from the Internet are valid and is related to requests made by computers inside your network. Packets that have no business entering the network are stopped by the router and subsequently discarded. You can also prevent your router from answering ping requests from the Internet by disabling this feature in your router’s configuration settings. People in the Internet have no valid reason why they need to know your router’s Internet WAN address other than they want to do snooping or unauthorized access to your network. The only people that need to know your router’s Internet address is your Internet service provider and they already know it. To prevent outsiders from using your network to gain access to the Internet for free, you can enable machine address filtering in your wireless router’s network setup. To do this you have to find out the machine address of each wireless computer and include these addresses on the list of computers to be allowed to use the network in the wireless router’s configuration settings. This will make sure that only the wireless computers inside your house will be able to make use of your Internet connection to access the Internet. However, you need to include in the wireless router’s allowed list the machine address of your friend’s laptop if he wants to access the Internet from your house. This may prove to be a little bit inconvenient but that’s the price we have to pay for having our network protected from unauthorized access. Finally every now
and then check your router’s status and see which computers are connecting
through your wireless network. You should be familiar with the Internet
Protocol addresses of the computers in your wireless network and if you
see that there are computers listed that you don’t know, then it’s time
again to make a review of your security measures and make any corrective
action to restore your network’s integrity. |
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Pointers For Going Wireless At Home. Points to consider when planning a wireless home network. Pros And Cons Of Disabling The DHCP Server In Your Home Wireless Router. Points to consider if you want to disable your wireless router's DHCP server. Have A Simple Web Presence At Absolutely No Cost. Microsoft's Query Analyzer can be used as an effective medium for learning SQL. Make Your Wireless Home Network More Secure. Ways to make your wireless network less hospitable to hackers and unauthorized users. |
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Copyright 2008 Aureo P. Castro Email: [email protected] |
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